Better Way to Assign Master Pages?

[Combs, Richard]

Karen Robbins wrote:
 
> Is there in Frame 9 a quick (or at least efficient) way of assigning
> a master page to multiple body pages at once?
> 
> I am dumping text from one Frame doc into another that is essentially
> a galley proof--one text frame with changing running heads based half
> on heading tags and half on other content.


The quick and efficient way is to use FM's default Right and Left master pages (for two-sided docs), which are automatically applied to right and left pages that you don't assign a custom master page to. It sounds like you're not using those at all and are trying to use custom master pages for every page. 

I can't imagine why that would be necessary. But then I don't really understand what you're saying about running heads. 

What I think of as running heads are normally implemented via the Running H/F system variables (of which there are a bunch). The definition of a Running H/F variable can specify a list of paragraph tags from which it pulls the content specified by its building blocks, displaying on any given page the content for the first instance of one of the specified paragraphs. For instance, Running H/F 1 might be defined as: 

<$paratext[Head1, Head2, Head3, NoteHead, SomeOtherPgfTag, YetAnotherPgfTag]>

If the first instance of any of those pgf tags on a page is Head3, Running H/F 1 would display the text of that Head3 in the running head of that page. So you don't need a custom master page to change what the running head displays. 

Even if you need more than the default Right and Left pages, they should work for the majority of the pages, with a limited number of custom master pages for the "outlier" cases. 

I don't use master page mapping, but I understand it's a pretty solid feature. Are you remembering to apply master pages when you update the book? It's a check box in the Update Book dialog box.

HTH, and apologies if I've misunderstood the problem. 

Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-903-6372
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